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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23586751">Cover Me Up</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl'>GoldStarGrl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Justified</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Childhood Friends, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Frottage, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Season 2 scene, Sharing a Bed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:59:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,920</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23586751</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They always sleep better when the other one's around.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Boyd Crowder/Raylan Givens</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>89</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Cover Me Up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The title is from a great country song <a href="https://youtu.be/WdwnGG29Upw">of the same name</a> that is just. Very Them.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>i.</strong>
</p><p>If he really wanted to, Boyd could’ve killed Raylan in his crib. </p><p>His birthday is June 1st. Raylan’s is June 29th. Those three weeks matter a lot with newborns, the difference can double body weight, hand strength, the ability to see more than a foot in front of them. </p><p>There aren’t many times in his life Boyd gets to be the bigger man, but the title does stick for the first few months.</p><p>Frances Givens and Clarey Crowder discuss business at the Givens' kitchen table, drinking whiskey out of teacups. It makes the new mothers look more respectable, if anyone stops by on this glowing August afternoon. Plausible deniability, if their husbands storm in like thunder and rain and need a reason to turn the bad weather on them. </p><p>Frances dragged Raylan’s cradle in next to her chair, so she can keep an eye on him while he naps. It’s an old thing, made decades before out of a tree that was struck by lightning, but still sturdy. He’s so small, doesn’t take up much space in it at all.</p><p>“You can put him in there, if you like,” she tells Clarey, because Boyd is red-faced and clutching a chunk of his mama’s wild, dark hair, his whining rising to a pitch that makes her nervous. Arlo already can’t stand Raylan crying, she can only imagine how he’ll sour if he hears a second baby. </p><p>Besides. They need to discuss what to do about the Bennetts. A war is creeping up on their families, and she knows if she and Clarey don't find a way to temper peace Harlan is going to lose a whole lot more than their weed supply.</p><p>“Shh, settle now,” Clarey whispers against Boyd’s chubby cheek, easing him into the crib beside Raylan. He stares at him with big, unblinking eyes that she swears keeps changing color. </p><p>Boyd reaches out and flops a tiny arm onto Raylan’s face, squeezing his nose with blunt little nails. Raylan whines in his sleep.</p><p>“Honestly, he’s a little terror already,” Clarey rolls her eyes, but both women notice he stops crying. </p><p>Frances is nothing if not an excellent bomb defuser.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>ii.</strong>
</p><p>Frances lets Boyd stay over the Givens house the night they bury his mama.</p><p>No one really discusses it, she just scoops him up in her arms – he’s seven, but a tiny seven – and puts him in the back of the pick-up with Raylan, still wearing his clip-on tie. Bo is too drunk to notice, and there’s no one else to give a damn. Boyd watches Frances' eyes turn red and shiny in the rearview mirror until Arlo slaps her and says to pull herself together. Then they just get hard.</p><p>Arlo and Frances don’t really stop arguing the whole night, just get progressively more drunk and loud. Even all the way upstairs in Raylan’s bedroom, Boyd can hear plates crashing, the sound of a body slamming into the wall. </p><p>Raylan doesn’t flinch at the noise, doesn’t react at all. He’s already taught himself to turn to stone. They eat candy and leave the windows open, which does nothing but move the sticky air around in circles, add the sound of crickets to the shouting. </p><p>“You gonna cry?” Raylan asks, breaking a Kit-Kat in half and handing Boyd the other piece. </p><p>"No." He knows he probably will. He cries about <em> everything, </em>a lost comic book, dropping the rock he was meaning to throw at Bowman on his own foot. Sitting by his mama’s deathbed, he couldn’t breath for sobbing, even when Bo snapped at him to stop acting like a faggot.</p><p>“Leave him be,” Clarey had said weakly. She pressed the pads of her fingers against his cheek. “My boy’s got a sensitive soul.”</p><p>He shakes this all out of his head. He doesn’t have a mama to defend him anymore, so he needs to toughen up. "This is boring. I wanna do something."</p><p>Raylan finishes his half of the Kit-Kat and opens another. He’s got such a sweet tooth, Boyd bets his teeth will rot out by the time they’re twelve. “We can’t watch TV or anything, it’s downstairs.” He doesn’t go downstairs once the sun sets. Nothing good ever happens in the Givens house once Arlo’s had his evening whiskey, especially not on a day like this one.</p><p>Boyd pulls the top sheet from Raylan’s twin bed and drapes it over his desk chair and lamp, creating a lopsided tent over them. He likes having something he can focus on doing with his hands. </p><p>“Let’s go camping, then,” he says. “You got a flashlight?”</p><p>Raylan rolls his eyes. He’s also perfected his put-upon expression by seven. He digs his heavy metal flashlight out from under his bed anyway, turning it on and holding the light under his chin, trying to make himself look dark and sinister. “You wanna tell Stephen King stories?”</p><p>“Don’t be trying to act like you can read, Raylan,” Boyd scoffs, and is rewarded with a shove, hard enough to tip him onto his back. Before he can bounce back up, Raylan settles onto the carpet next to him, blinding them both with the flashlight. </p><p>“Shut up,” he says, and proceeds to tell Boyd a wildly inaccurate summary of <em> Carrie</em>, based on the movie he watched twenty minutes of on TV. Boyd shifts, focusing on the words, the crinkling of wrappers, until the world gets dark and heavy around them, and Raylan's yawning between plot points.</p><p>He wakes up in the gray light of dawn with his head on Raylan’s stomach, feeling sick from eating too much candy, but a little less like the whole world is ending. </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>iii.</b>
</p><p>They get arrested for the first time when they’re fourteen. Unrelated charges. </p><p>In the summer months, half the holding cells in the county get filled up with angry, bored, teenagers. Boyd and Bowman get hauled in for setting off fireworks too close to a pine tree and catching a quarter of the McGowan’s land on fire before someone gets it under control. Raylan got caught smashing mailboxes with Mike Graves from the JV baseball team.</p><p>Bowman is only twelve. Usually the Sheriff’s office will cut kids under 13 loose, but he spits in an officer’s face and makes a comment about his mother and gets himself locked in isolation. Mike’s daddy bails him out within an hour, but Raylan settles his back against the concrete wall, knowing he’s in for the night. Tonight, the tank is home to a handful of older men, drunks and addicts, and a little farther down the bench, Boyd.</p><p>Boyd didn’t even bother to call his father, figures he should stay and make sure no one gives Bowman any more shit than he deserves. The fleeting want for Clarey is enough to make him curl into himself, set his teeth and plant himself on the bench. He’s fine. He’s almost a man, and he doesn’t need anyone but himself.</p><p>It takes him a second to realize Raylan is staring at him. </p><p>“This like a rite of passage in the Crowder clan?” He asks. “Criminal equivalent of popping your cherry?”</p><p>“Oh, because Arlo has such a profound sense of respect for the law,” Boyd shoots back without thought. Raylan’s skinny shoulders tighten, but he smirks anyway. He slides down the bench so they’re sitting side-by-side, touching at the knees and hips and shoulders. </p><p>“You have any cigarettes?” Raylan asks, and he doesn’t normally smoke – too focused on baseball to risk fucking that up with bad lungs – but he wants something to focus on besides how pissed off he is. Boyd shakes his head, patting the front pockets of his jeans.</p><p>“I got gum.” </p><p>Without uncrossing his arms, Raylan holds a palm open expectantly. </p><p>“You’re real presumptuous tonight, Raylan Givens.” Boyd hands him a stick anyway.</p><p>They talk, stupid high school rumors and whispered bets about what they think the others are in for. The small windows high on the sheriff’s station walls show the sky getting lighter and lighter. </p><p>Raylan smells like doublemint. </p><p>Boyd lets his head tip in exhaustion, but catches himself before he actually snuggles into Raylan’s shoulder. There’s still a couple other men in the cage, and he’d rather not get beaten to death for being a faggot to top off what’s been a very long night.</p><p>He’s not...that, exactly. </p><p>Raylan bumps his shoulder against his, leans his knee and thigh against his. His skin is hot, even through the fabric of his jeans.</p><p>Neither of them pulls away. </p><p>It’s dangerous to let your eyelids grow heavy in a jail cell. You’re the only one there who can watch your back. Boyd knows that, he knows even now that this is his world, the first of many times looking at the world through iron bars.  </p><p>But pressed up against Raylan, he lets himself doze for five or ten seconds at a time, until someone comes in to let the Crowder boys go home.</p><p>He's almost disappointed.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>iv.</b>
</p><p>Something about Raylan is making Boyd really nervous, lately. </p><p>He’s smarter than most nineteen-year-olds, smarter than almost every grown person he knows. Boyd reads books, knows about science, philosophy, the emotional screeds of poets and the analytical studies of brain chemists.</p><p>Logically, he knows that he finds Raylan attractive. He can admit that. </p><p>It’s hardly a revelation. The boy’s been tangled up with a different pretty cheerleader every week since the 5th grade, Boyd’s sure there are countless other girls – and boys – who never caught his eye, yet still admired him from afar. The sky is blue, water is wet, Raylan Givens is gorgeous.</p><p>There’s plenty of people Boyd’s wanted and can’t have, though. Collateral damage of being a man who lusts after other men in rural Kentucky, of having Ava Randolph fall for his Neanderthal little brother, of trying for intense and brooding and getting written off as creepy. </p><p>None of that is what makes him nervous. </p><p>Raylan’s been on edge since his mama died a few months back. He’s at Audry’s almost every night, drinking half the bar. Occasionally there’s a whore on his lap, but nobody ever sees him going off with one to close the deal. He gets in a lot of fights, breaks glass and shows up to work with busted lips and black eyes. </p><p>He’s not sleeping. </p><p>It’s dim now, but Boyd finds himself thinking about when they put Clarey in the ground. Faint memories of candy and airy sheets over his head. </p><p>“Hey, let’s get a drink,” Boyd blurts out one night. They’re barely two steps out of the hole, but something in the back of his mind is telling him that if he doesn’t say it now he’ll lose his chance.</p><p>Raylan shrugs. There are dark circles under his eyes that didn't come from anyone's fists. “Audry’s?”</p><p>Boyd shakes his head, the idea of watching Raylan with women draped all over him leaves a sour taste in his mouth. “Not in the mood to watch you get blown, Givens.” <em>Why did he</em> say<em> that?</em></p><p>Raylan doesn’t smile, but shoves him automatically, an old knee-jerk reaction to try and make him tip. Boyd sways, but doesn’t go down. </p><p>They get in Boyd’s truck, his mind already running to a puddle in Cumberland with good beer and awful whiskey. Raylan stays tightly coiled in the passenger’s seat the entire time, jaw set.</p><p>Halfway down a dark dirt road, something under the hood starts to smoke. </p><p>“Goddamn it,” Boyd pulls over and jumps out of the cab. Raylan lurches forward and puts the truck into park. “Much obliged,” he calls over his shoulder. </p><p>“Gonna be real embarrassing when you get run over by your own car one of these days,” Raylan shouts. Mostly annoyed, but amusement tinges the edges of his words.</p><p>Boyd laughs and pops his hood. “That’s why I keep you around, Raylan. You’re my own personal pit crew.”</p><p>He waves the smoke away from the engine, feeling a heady warmth in his stomach. Somewhere between making sure the piston rings aren’t fucked and checking the PCV tube for clogs, he identifies the feeling.</p><p>As smart as he is, it takes until this moment to realize why Raylan's behavior had him worried, anger and anxiety and jealousy mixed into a cocktail of wanting to be with him, look out for him.</p><p>Finding Raylan attractive isn’t what’s making him nervous. <em> Liking </em>Raylan is.</p><p>Boyd takes a deep breath, tries to steady himself by grabbing the open edge of the hood, only to scald both palms on the overheating metal. He hisses and recoils. </p><p>“Jesus Christ on a cross!” </p><p>The passenger’s side door opens, Raylan’s boots hit the dead leaves. Boyd straightens up, tries to breath through the pain. He’s fine. Nothing happened. Nothing has changed. </p><p>“Move over, let me look.” Raylan leans down, dipping his head under the hood. </p><p>Boyd’s hands are stinging, but he doesn’t do anything but hold them in front of him like a surgeon. There’s no street lights for fifty miles, but Boyd can still see the faint shape of Raylan’s profile in the moonlight. He yawns, rubs his face. The warm feeling intensifies, starts to shimmer in the pit of his stomach.</p><p>Boyd <em> wants </em> him, not just his body but <em>him</em>, how was he obtuse enough to miss it? Who is he, Bowman?</p><p>The engine roars again, and Raylan straightens up triumphantly, wiping his greasy hands on the sides of his pants. Boyd stops thinking about his brother.</p><p>“This thing’s a piece of shit, you bring it to Lorraine?” </p><p>He swallows, for once having a hard time talking. “I can fix my own car, Raylan.”</p><p>Raylan cocks an eyebrow. “Really? Cause it looks like I’m your white knight today.”</p><p>“Oh yeah, my hero.” He gives him the finger. Raylan continues to look smug, teeth and eyes glinting in the darkness. </p><p>Boyd leans forward and kisses his cheek, retreating just as quickly and digging the heels of his boots into the earth. </p><p>Raylan's hand goes up, and Boyd thinks he’s about to get hit. But he just touches the spot on his skin where Boyd’s lips were. </p><p>For a second, nobody moves. Even the truck seems to hum more quietly. Boyd wishes so badly for a light, to see Raylan’s expression better. But he’s always worked with what he’s given, and nobody’s gotten punched or called a faggot yet. </p><p>In for a penny, in for a pound.</p><p>He closes the space between them again, grabs two fistfuls of Raylan’s thick hair and kisses him hard, desperate. In case this is the only one he gets. </p><p>It doesn’t exactly feel like he imagined it would, the nights he lies awake and jerks off to all the guys and girls in Harlan he’ll never get. Raylan isn’t kissing back, and he stands motionless for just long enough that Boyd starts to back away, planning a hasty retreat, wondering if he’d get in <em>that</em> much trouble for running Raylan over to keep him from telling anyone about this.</p><p>Raylan grabs his hips, pulling him flush against him. He is close enough now to see the tightness across his face. </p><p>“Jesus, Boyd,” he breathes. His grip gets meaner, and he kisses him back, hot and open mouthed, pressing forward so insistently that he bends Boyd backwards at the waist.</p><p>Boyd digs his heels in harder, like it’ll keep him from floating off in his glee. <em> Raylan Givens </em> is hard against his leg. </p><p>“I’ve got a mighty fine truck bed, just over there,” he manages.</p><p>Raylan nods fervently and takes his hand, leading him back, laying him out underneath him, barely taking his mouth off him the whole trip.</p><p>Boyd feels like he's being kissed stupid, losing the orientation of the stars above him and the ridged truck bed under him. Raylan hasn't shaved today, and the stubble burns against his chin and cheeks. He can feel his cock straining through his jeans and coveralls, but when he reaches to undo Raylan's belt, a hand stops him.</p><p>“I’m, um,” Raylan's flushed, more than he should be just yet from their activities. “Can we just stay here a little longer?”</p><p>Boyd raises an eyebrow. He's met guys like this, the few times he’d driven to Lexington or Louisville with the intention of screwing a man. They got real skittish when it came to the actual act. “You don’t have to be the one taking it up the ass,”</p><p>Raylan shakes his head. “No, not that, I just…” he laughs without mirth, glaring up at the heavens like he’s angry about it. “I’m just really tired.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Boyd kisses him again, quickly, and runs a hand through his hair. “I know.”</p><p>So they just keep kissing. He pushes his knee in between Raylan’s legs, grabs his shoulders to hold him in place while Raylan rubs hard against him, becoming increasingly frantic and red-cheeked. His jaw goes slack against Boyd’s neck as he comes in boxers, down his jeans, like they’re still kids. </p><p>He’s shaking a little – Christ, he really must be exhausted – but before Boyd can move to hold him or find something in the truck to wipe him down, Raylan’s got a grip tight on Boyd’s wrists and is shifting positions, giving Boyd the solid side of his hip, his own leg, to rut against. Boyd’s hips snap upwards.</p><p>It’s itchy and uncomfortable after, chafed up, lying side-by-side as their come dries all over them, but Raylan rests his head on Boyd’s chest, falling asleep almost as soon as his eyes close. </p><p>He looks more peaceful than he has in weeks.</p><p>Boyd shakes his wrist out from under Raylan’s back, makes sure to set his watch so they’re back up before the light comes up and another driver catches two guys in each other’s arms.</p><p>He rests his chin on the top of Raylan’s head and is out like a light.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>v.</strong>
</p><p>“We don’t always have to do this after someone dies,” Boyd says, even as Raylan shifts underneath him, working his suit pants off. He hasn’t changed from Helen’s funeral early today. </p><p>“Oh, you planning to take me out on a date first?” Raylan snarls, nipping at his neck, running a hand down his back. “Dinner, movie, blowjob in the truck?”</p><p>They’re on the guest room bed in Ava’s house, not even bothering to get under the sheets. Ava’s talking business with Mags on the porch, balancing a mason jar of apple-pie shine on her lap.</p><p>She knows they’re back here. Boyd’s too classy to step out on the woman he loves without her practically pushing him into the bedroom.</p><p>“You know he’s hurting.” She pressed a kiss to his temple. “And Mags is more amenable to our terms when there ain’t a lawman around.” Another kiss when he opened his mouth to protest. “Or someone overly mouthy.”</p><p>So his girlfriend knows he’s getting felt up in her guest room by Raylan Givens. She knows the way the two of them used to be. </p><p>Sometimes, the way people exchange glances, throw around phrases like<em> love story</em>, he thinks everybody does.</p><p>“Now Raylan,” he says, turning his attention back to the barb at hand. “We’re much too mature for that now. Look at us, civil men who own suits.”</p><p>A pang of sadness flashes in Raylan’s eyes, remembering the funeral, his family fractured beyond repair. Boyd kisses him deeply, and Raylan’s knees rise on either side of his hips.</p><p>It seems to push away the feelings. He kicks his dress shoes off in one fluid motion, and Boyd smirks, remembers how Raylan used to keep the laces loose so he could pull off that exact move. And folks say <em> his </em> personality is affected. </p><p>He rises off Raylan to kick the bedroom door completely closed, shutting out a thin stream of evening light. The glow is still coming through the white curtains Ava had sewn, and Raylan looks holy. That hair is grayer now, but just as thick. Just as much fun to pull.</p><p>“You’re like a fine wine, boy,” Boyd grins, pushing his pants and boxers down, watching Raylan crumple up his own suit in the effort to shed it. “Just get better-looking with age.”</p><p>Raylan pushes himself up on his elbows as Boyd crawls back on top of him, boxing him in with his hands and knees. “You know wines are judged by their taste, not their looks.”</p><p>Boyd kisses him again. “Who says I ain’t aiming to do that, too?” </p><p>He starts moving methodically, sucking hard at the pulse points on Raylan’s neck, his sternum, the flesh just above his nipple. Raylan shudders underneath him – so sensitive – so he spends awhile there, marking him purple and magenta. He hopes one of the other Marshals or the next woman he fucks sees them, proof of person Raylan Givens first belonged to, will always belong to. He licks a stripe down his chest, to the dark blonde hair furring down to his cock. </p><p>“Fuck,” Raylan hisses, gripping Boyd’s hair, and he takes him in his mouth. Raylan almost sits up, curling like a crescent over Boyd’s head, breathing unevenly. “No, wait.”</p><p>Boyd looks up from under his brow, still gently sucking on the head. Raylan lays back down, staring pointedly at the ceiling so he doesn’t have to make eye contact. </p><p>“Can we just fuck?”</p><p>Boyd looks at the painfully hard cock rubbing against his lips. “Ready when you are. Which is clearly now.”</p><p>Raylan flips them backwards with his usual grace, Boyd’s head hanging off the bottom of the bed. Raylan wraps his hands under his knees and pulls him closer. Boyd can feel his heart racing under his hands.</p><p>They fuck, bruising and rough, the pain lowering to a dull, pleasurable burn as he gets used to the fullness of Raylan inside him, the pressure. </p><p>“We good?” Raylan asks, nearly as an afterthought. Boyd lifts his head, presses a smacking kiss to Raylan’s chin. Savors the stunned expression that follows.</p><p>“Just like riding a bike.”</p><p>Raylan makes a noise through his nose that could be mistaken for a chuckle.</p><p>The rest of the sex doesn’t get any sweeter, the muscles in Raylan’s back and face don’t get less tense. Helen is still dead and Harlan is about to get bloody. But he kisses Boyd as he comes, jerks him off as Boyd runs his hands through that hair, even though it gets all over their t-shirts and half-open button-ups. </p><p>And when they're both spent, he flops back to the right side of the bed. He stretches his arm out across the pillow next to his, an invitation to Boyd.</p><p>If he really wanted to, he could kill Raylan in bed, right now. </p><p>His hand could brush against the floor and hook on his Sig or Raylan’s Glock and that’d be that, right here and now. Would probably save him a hell of a lot of trouble in the long run.</p><p>But the light is so warm and lovely. And he’s got a criminal empire and a woman out there making it bigger, getting what they want so he can get what he needs. </p><p>So Boyd crawls up the length of the bed and nestles into the crook of Raylan’s arm. Their bodies are older now, harder and more scarred. Some of those marks put there by each other. Someday, maybe even as soon as they get up, get dressed, this is all going to go to hell.</p><p>But he’ll sleep on it first.</p>
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